Research shows that there are many benefits to a diverse workforce. Among them are higher revenue growth, greater readiness to innovate, increased ability to recruit a diverse talent pool, and a much higher employment retention rate, according to Great Place to Work, a global resource for workplace culture.
However, that diversity doesn’t necessarily lead to inclusivity. “An inclusive workplace doesn’t just have a diversity of people present,” article author and Coaching Career Lead Matt Bush said. “It has a diversity of people involved, developed, empowered and trusted by the business.”
With that in mind, how do today’s leaders ensure their employees feel involved, developed, empowered and trusted on a daily basis? Below, local CTOs Sejal Amin and Richard Ford explain.
“Being an inclusive leader means seeing beneath the surface, and recognizing that building a culture of inclusion requires us to really pay attention to the subtle cues we’re given or that we ourselves give,” Ford said.
For Amin, CTO at customer engagement software company Khoros, being an inclusive leader means ensuring each team member is given an equal opportunity to participate in high-level projects. To do this, Amin teaches her teams to move outside of their comfort zones and select diverse team members with differing skills.
From your experience, what is the key to being an inclusive leader, and why?
Facilitating psychological safety is key. This is the most important thing that any leader can do. At every level of an organization, teams will look around for that safety to bring their best selves to work. The true job of a leader is not to command and control — it’s about climate control. That climate is established from understanding your core values and beliefs, and then living those values.
Engineers build products and engineering leaders build teams. A dozen of the best engineers in a room won’t become a great team without that safety and trust. Team building means we must share in successes and failures. If something is successful, the team gets credit. If there are mistakes, the team must correct and learn from them. The basis of this environment is a blameless culture with leadership admitting to their own mistakes. I believe in setting this example so the organization will emulate the same behavior. Accepting your imperfections, showing up as a human being, actively demonstrating psychological safety, and being clear we’re all on this journey together are ways to show your capacity for vulnerability and connection. Plus, it creates a safe environment for your team.
What’s a real-life example of your inclusive leadership style in action?
I make a big effort to ensure that people are given an opportunity to engage in all high-profile projects. Often, leaders tend to engage the same people in visible projects because they fall into the trap that they are the only ones with the skills to do them, or they are the people in the inner circle of testing. It’s incredibly important to consider who is capable of doing what these important jobs require and push the team to select someone that’s not on the “usual” list. I teach my teams to move outside of their comfort zones and select a diverse team with different skills, experience and people for significant projects — and only be involved in the beginning. In the end, it’s better for the people involved to have those experiences and better for the organization to have a broader range of people to engage in projects, even if it may mean more work upfront.
The true job of a leader is not to command and control — it’s about climate control.”
It’s hard to be an inclusive leader unless you’re aware of your blind spots and biases. What steps have you taken to identify and address your own? And what impact has that had on the way you lead?
I believe it’s important to remember that every individual is unique and contributes to the environment in different ways. Being an extrovert, I have to remember that contributions and leadership come from everywhere, so I make an effort to ensure that everyone is seen and heard in the workplace by paying attention to ensure everyone is being seen and heard. This includes being mindful of who is at the table, who is doing the talking, or who is taking notes when he or she could be leading the conversation. Based on what I observe, I mindfully design and assign people to high-value projects, acknowledge the importance of lower profile contributions, respond to double standards in culture positive ways, ask different people around the table to weigh in and equalize access to leaders proactively. This ensures that people at all levels have an opportunity to contribute. Of course, this must happen at all levels, but the example starts at the top for others to follow.
In order to be a more inclusive leader, Ford, CTO at Praetorian, a cybersecurity company specializing in risk prevention, deals with problems quickly. He said that when issues occur, he follows up with the employee “privately, gently and directly” with a goal to turn them into an advocate rather than taking a more disciplinary approach that can sometimes build resentment.
From your experience, what is the key to being an inclusive leader, and why?
I think the most important part of being an inclusive leader is the culture you allow within your sphere of influence. In the long term, it’s the culture that is going to drive a workplace that embraces inclusivity, and so focusing on culture is critical. I recently moved to Praetorian as CTO, and a very big part of why I made that decision was the tremendous focus on culture here. Getting culture right will help diversity to grow.
Aside from the social good of that, from a purely selfish perspective as a leader, a diverse team will solve problems more quickly and imaginatively than a monoculture of perspectives — and a diverse team requires an inclusive culture. It’s also important to recognize that not all inclusivity challenges are obvious: some differences between us are clear, others can be much more subtle. Being an inclusive leader means seeing beneath the surface and recognizing that building a culture of inclusion requires us to really pay attention to the subtle cues we’re given or that we ourselves give.
What’s a real-life example of your inclusive leadership style in action?
I think the biggest thing one can do as a manager is to address issues around a lack of inclusivity head on in a timely way. For example, in the past I’ve had employees and peers who, perhaps even unconsciously, said or did things that might negatively impact inclusion. You have to deal with those instances quickly in order to create a culture that allows our differences to flourish. There are different kinds of diversity and many ways to act that tend to minimize it. Hiring is the obvious one, but inclusivity is infinitely broader than that.
Because of this, I will always follow up — privately, gently and directly — to provide feedback when I see either missed opportunities to increase our inclusion or things that harm it. It’s easy in real time and it gets harder the longer it’s ignored. Dealing with problems quickly is the trick, but you have to do it in a way that turns an employee into an advocate.
Getting culture right will help diversity to grow.”
It’s hard to be an inclusive leader unless you’re aware of your blind spots and biases. What steps have you taken to identify and address your own? And what impact has that had on the way you lead?
Unconscious bias is really hard to diagnose and even harder to treat. I think it’s become even more difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic, where we’ve been dealing with our teams remotely. You lose the fidelity of non-verbal cues and it’s a little easier to make mistakes. For example, as a manager, it’s easier to connect with people who share similar traits to you. I actively solicit input, but the only way I can actually get it is if people have enough trust to know they can give me feedback I might not like. Being open to discomfort fixes all kinds of different leadership challenges. If the relationship is there, just ask!
